Verdugo Views: McGroarty left an impact on history with ‘The Mission Play’
John McGroarty, who wrote a column for the Los Angeles Times called “Seen from the Green Verdugo Hills,” also wrote “The Mission Play,” a three-hour portrayal of the California missions.
The play, which opened in 1912, was seen by an estimated 2.5 million people. It was inspired by Helen Hunt Jackson’s 1884 “Ramona,” a fictional account of two star-crossed lovers, which sparked an interest in “Old Spanish California.”
This interest, coupled with new railroad lines connecting the Midwest with the West, brought an influx of people ready to see and hear more of our mission story.
In 1902, a wealthy hotelier named Frank Miller began building the Mission Inn in Riverside. He also began traveling the world to collect treasures to display in the hotel, built mainly in the Mission Revival style to attract travelers seeking “old California.”
On a trip to Europe, he saw the “Oberammergau Passion Play” and returned home to find someone to write a similar play about Southern California’s dramatic past.
A friend suggested that he talk to McGroarty.
“[McGroarty] had been writing Californiana [the study of California history and culture] for The Times; he knew the region; he could put words together,” according to William Deverell, author of “Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past.”
McGroarty, born in Pennsylvania in 1862, suffered from severe asthma as a youth. Despite his poor health, he began teaching school, then wrote for the Wilkes-Barre Evening Leader.
In 1901, after marrying a young woman named Ida Lubrecht, the couple made their way west, eventually settling in Tujunga, in hopes that the clear air would ease his asthma. That same year, he began writing his weekly column for The Times, according to Wikipedia.
After listening to Miller’s request, McGroarty agreed to write the play. He took time off from the newspaper and moved into the Mission Inn to write; reportedly completing the project in just eight weeks.
Unexpectedly, Miller backed away from the play before its debut, but McGroarty persevered. The play opened on April 29, 1912, on an outdoor stage at the San Gabriel Mission with a cast of over a hundred.
“It was, by all accounts, a virtuoso performance. The audience shouted and cheered. People laughed and wept,’’ Deverell wrote. They even pulled the author to the stage for a standing ovation.
Within 10 weeks, after 127 consecutive shows, the play entered the American theater record books. “Within the year, it was a Southern California phenomena that connected and expanded the ‘mission fantasies of the region.’” Deverell added that railroads incorporated the play into their advertisements, and one reviewer wrote that “the entire history of California could now be seen in an afternoon.’’
The San Gabriel Mission Playhouse was constructed in 1927 to house the production, which saw its 3,000th performance in February 1930.
McGroarty had close ties to Glendale. In 1930, he spoke at a huge fiesta thrown by the San Rafael Park Assn., formed to save the old adobe on Dorothy Drive from demolition. (Yes, they were successful; it is now one of our foremost city parks.)
In 1955, at the unveiling of a historic marker at McGroarty’s home, Glendale News-Press publisher Carroll W. Parcher spoke of his friend, who had died in 1944, recalling the early days of Tujunga when McGroarty founded the Millionaire Club of Happiness and Contentment, made up of men who sat on the post office steps waiting for the mail to be delivered by horse and buggy from La Crescenta.
The marker was just one of many honors bestowed on McGroarty. He was named poet laureate of California, knighted by King Alfonso XIII of Spain and also made a Knight of Saint George by Pope Pius XI for his positive portrayal of the mission priests in California.
Readers Write:
In response to Daniel Conover’s request for information about the Roads End neighborhood, Richard Threlkeld, who was a student at Glendale High in 1966, emailed to say that he had a high school friend whose parents lived in that area. Threlkeld had the impression that it was a community of missionaries.
KATHERINE YAMADA can be reached at katherineyamada@gmail.com. or by mail at Verdugo Views, c/o Glendale News-Press, 202 W. First St., Second Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Please include your name, address and phone number.
